


dangerous attachments

by Hymn



Series: Hymn's Fic: The Mandalorian Collection [1]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: ?????, Disgruntled Pining, F/M, OR IS IT, One-Sided Attraction, Pre-Relationship, ep4 spoilers, potential mando's name spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21658201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: Days after the AT-ST has been broken down for parts, they’re still trying to get mud out of their boots.Cara Dune is not a good person. The Mandalorian makes her try to be better.
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian)
Series: Hymn's Fic: The Mandalorian Collection [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561399
Comments: 52
Kudos: 390





	dangerous attachments

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers up through ep4 sanctuary. spoilers for mando's name as it's given in an interview by the actor. IF YOU KNOW ME AT ALL, you know that i have a name kink jesus f u ck of course this happened OF COURSE THIS HAPPENED. i started looking things up to try and get slang right and know what i'm talking about, but i gave up pretty quick and know nothing about what i'm talking about. this fic is not the fic i sat down to write, but here we are. thanks for reading.

  
  
  


Days after the AT-ST has been broken down for parts, they’re still trying to get mud out of their boots. “I don’t know how they stand it,” Cara grunts, whole hand shoved in with a bit of cloth to try and get the still-squelching pond scum out.

“What?”

She keeps her glare on her boot, grunting with effort, before admitting, “All this muck. Not like I’m not used to a bit of grime. Comes with the job. But I don’t _live in it_. Don’t know how they do it, day to day.”

“Hm.” 

“Go on, tell me you’re not still finding bits of pond inside that helmet of yours.”

He laughs a bit, pleasant voice even softer for the way the voice transmitter breaks it down just a little. “No,” he says, like it’s a secret. “Had a bounty once, when I was first starting out. Weapon of choice was Velusian fursnake venom.”

“No shit,” says Cara, diverted from her boot-tending. 

The Mandalorian quirks his head, that way he has of being so damned emotive without ever showing a single facial feature. It’s impressive, because he’s a human in a metal suit; not a lot to work with. The tilt of his helmet this time looks surprisingly bashful, a little smug, like he’s having fun.

Cara tries not to smile, and then decides: why fight it?

“Yeah. That’s what I thought, too,” the Mandalorian says, tone dry. “Especially since she wasn’t using darts tipped in it. She had some sort of like-- perfume bottle? Pretty, ornate thing. Didn’t look like a weapon until she started spraying it everywhere. _Kept_ spraying it, all over me. Got under my armor, soaked into the fabric, just-- just _everywhere_.”

Cara’s already laughing, can guess where this is going.

“I catch the bounty,” the Mandalorian continues, gently shaking a boot between his knees until a stubborn bit of pebble comes tumbling out onto the deck, cascading to the soft earth beyond. “Which isn’t a pretty scene, but I’m not going to admit to _how_ ugly it got--” Cara’s laugh gets louder, so that the Mandalorian has to raise his voice to still be heard, “--and I clean up best I can, right?”

“Right,” Cara snorts.

“Right,” the Mandalorian groans, “but not good _enough_. I’m halfway to the next system when I find out I missed some. Dribbles into my _eyes_ , Dune.”

Cara’s laughing so hard _her_ eyes are watering. “Good thing auto-pilot exists,” she gasps.

The Mandalorian is suspiciously silent.

“You’re _shitting_ me.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” the Mandalorian mutters, but Cara can hear the laughter in there, the mild tease at his own expense. 

He’s surprisingly good at this, she thinks, the being normal. 

It’s not as though Cara is under an illusion that soldiers, mercenaries, _bounty hunters_ are anything other than what they are. They’re people, plain and simple. Plenty of the ones who’ve been in the business of hurting and being hurt for a while have a lot of humor tucked up under the nasty snarl of savagery, because there’s only so long you can stand to be grim and stoic in the face of misery. 

But this Mandalorian isn’t like that, not really. In the sparse amount of time she’s known _this_ bounty hunter he’s taken her by surprise, again and again, with his casual humanity, his simple decency. 

He’s not damaged goods, like her. He’s just… good. 

“You’re one lucky idiot,” she tells him, not certain she means it.

\---

The days stretch until time no longer seems to have meaning. One dawn is replaced with another, until Cara is no longer surprised to see it from the same vantage point, the same easy complacency. She loses track of how many have passed, how long they’ve been idling here on this deck, in this village, on this little dirtball of a planet.

And she keeps thinking about it, how the Mandalorian is _good_. 

She sees it in the way he’s hopelessly smitten with Omera, something pure and shining in him drawn to that motherly smile, the steady hands, the upright spine. She sees it in the way he is with the kid, protective and indulgent and hysterically bad at being stern, a shiny metal man all wrapped up around a tiny, green finger.

With the sun perched newly on the horizon, Cara kicks her boot heels, finally dry and free of pond scum, up onto a crate. She slouches. Scratches her shorn nails through the tangled tousle of her hair, and yawns theatrically. 

“You look comfortable.”

Cara squints into the light, glad to see Omera’s sweet, teasing smile. “I am, yeah. Taking a bit of a vacation, now that most of the work here is done. Hope you don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Omera says, shifting, and that’s when the morning light and shadows stop playing tricks on Cara’s eyes, and she sees the two trays being held carefully aloft, full of her and the Mandalorian’s complimentary breakfast. Simple fare, but good all the same. Cara’s stomach rumbles, jolting her into motion.

“Shit,” Cara grunts, feet dropping as she sits up, too abrupt. “Here, sorry, let me--”

“I have it--”

The tray almost falls, lost amidst their fumbling hands as Omera tries to lean down to offer it, and Cara tries to get up to retrieve it. It gets the two of them too close for a moment, an awkward standoff what allows Cara to count Omera’s lashes, the faint, nearly invisible splatter of freckles over the bridge of her nose. Cara takes in a deep breath, smells whatever subtle thing Omera puts on to stop smelling like pond water and smell like something pretty and soft instead.

“Sorry,” Cara grins, lopsided.

Omera arches a single brow, some combination of humor and motherly reprimand bright in her eyes. It’s a good look for her. Cara can’t help but admire it, watching as Omera straightens carefully, stepping politely back and out of Cara’s space.

Yeah. All right. 

Cara can get why the Mandalorian is so smitten.

“He might not be up yet,” Cara says, and does not fidget with the tray now safely in her lap.

“I am,” comes a familiar voice, unmarred by electronics or steel. “A moment, please.”

It’s jarring to hear him sounding like that. He must be naked in there. Or, not naked, not exactly. He probably sleeps in his gear, just like Cara does, boots laced and armor strapped loosely on. But he hasn’t got his _helmet_ on, it sounds like, and that’s apparently the most stripped bare he can possibly be. Cara sees the faint flush on Omera’s cheeks as she eyes the doorway, thinking about it, about pushing her way in and _seeing_ him, claiming him irrevocably.

Cara’s shoulders go tight, muscles in her thighs bunching in readiness.

But Omera waits that asked-for moment, respecting his boundaries until the Mandalorian invites her inside.

Cara relaxes into the sunshine, prods idly at her food.

Voices come from within, muffled, soft, an awkward back-and-forth. Cara tries not to listen; would be rude to, and also probably boring. After all, Omera is obviously good, and the Mandalorian is good, and together they’d make an amazingly sweet, ordinary family, raising their kids and farming shrimp until they’re old and gray and all shriveled up from a long, boring life and _happiness_. 

Cara won’t think it’s a pity.

She won’t reminisce about the way the Mandalorian fought when they first met, how it felt to pull a blaster on each other instantaneously, like a handshake but far more vital. How it’d felt teaming up with him as the bomb ticked down, like a dance they both discovered the steps of together, when Cara had always been miserable at grace, always stepping on the toes of her partners. 

She _won’t_ think it’s a pity, because it’s a good thing, a great thing. Even if the Mandalorian didn’t deserve to settle down, his adorable kid with the big ears definitely does. 

Cara eats her breakfast, doesn’t keep track of how long it takes for Omera to leave the barn.

\---

Another dawn, another breakfast.

Cara’s starting to itch beneath her skin, restless. She’d spent the pre-dawn hours working out until she was a stinking, sweating mess, and hadn’t bothered to rinse off yet. Her muscles feel like jelly after several days of laziness, and she’s letting the burn remind her that she can’t afford to stop looking over her shoulder, can’t risk staying still for so long.

Omera comes; Omera goes.

Cara sits in her chair, eats her food, and watches the Mandalorian’s kid play with the rest of the younglings as the day crawls along toward afternoon. “I was curious,” says the Mandalorian, who has taken to leaning against the wall on the opposite side of his doorway from her at odd moments, his stance becoming more and more relaxed with each dawn that comes, each sun that sets. 

“Bounty hunters aren’t meant to be curious,” Cara points out.

“Not about bounties, no. But I don’t have a bounty,” the Mandalorian points out in turn, sounding annoyed. Cara bites back a smile, rotates her shoulders carefully to try and loosen up her muscles. “I just thought-- you look good like this.”

“Ha.”

“You do,” the Mandalorian insists. “Sitting in the sunlight suits you, Dune. Resting, relaxing. You’re more hair-trigger than I am.”

In her peripheral, Cara can see him shift idly, foot to foot. It’s a tell, and he probably wouldn’t have made it if he wasn’t feeling so comfortable. It’s dangerous. Stupid. Makes something in Cara’s chest wince, waiting for a blow. For the best that the Mandalorian stays here, happy and safe, where he can afford to keep being stupidly comfortable, guard all the way down, and Cara doesn’t have to worry about him any longer. 

Annoyed, she asks: “Is there a point to all of this?”

“That’s what I was wondering.”

Finally, Cara twists in her seat to look at him properly, because she wants him to see the incredulous face she’s making. 

The sun glints white-hot off his helmet as it ducks down, turned as if he’s looking back.

She sort of hates how he looks, arms casually crossed, one knee bent. A pretty package in armored steel that she wants to take apart; she hates that his goodness makes her feel monstrous. If she’d known this would happen, these feelings fluttering to life within her veins, like acid eating through her, then she never would have taken that money, this job.

Too late now. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re sitting here every day, as soon as the sun’s up. You hate it, don’t you? Being still. Taking time off to relax. So why--”

I don’t hate it, she thinks. I just don’t want to keep it for very long, this feeling of stillness, of peace.

Peace takes far too much commitment.

Cara hadn’t been lying to the Mandalorian when she’d admitted politics aren’t her thing, but that doesn’t mean she hadn’t picked up a few tricks about deflection before she left that world for good. So she drops her scowl, forcibly pushes her irritation away, and smiles slow and smug, purposeful. 

“What,” she taunts. “You want someone to forget themselves and shuffle into your quaint little barn with your face exposed?”

The Mandalorian goes still, not even breathing.

“Oh?” Cara hums, as if it’s a surprise when it’s anything but. She quirks both brows up, resettling into her chair so she looks relaxed, restful, just as the Mandalorian had claimed. “You do, do you? Can I take a guess which hot widow it is you’re hoping might be the lucky shuffler? I’m thinking her name starts with a--”

“Stop it.”

“Nope,” Cara grins. “That’s not the letter I was thinking of.”

She can practically _smell_ his irritation, sharp and acrid like metal, like ozone, like blasterfire hanging in the air. 

He says, “I take it back. You look lazy and boring. The absolute worst. You’re going to rot out here.”

She thinks she would, if she stayed. But she doesn’t plan to. She’s just staying long enough to get things sorted, to see the job done right. It’s been a long time since she was able to do that without regret, without feeling oily somewhere inside at the choices she’s making. 

Maybe being near the shining goodness of the Mandalorian makes her feel monstrous at times, but it also keeps giving her a chance to prove that she’s _not_.

Cara rises to her feet in one explosive motion; sees him flinch, just slightly, at the suddenness of it. “Want to go for another round, then?” she asks with a knowing smirk, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at a patch of meadow on the edge of the village’s pockmarked farmland.

It takes a moment for the Mandalorian to settle back into easiness, but he does.

“...Sure. If only to keep you from going soft,” he says.

\---

She likes this, far more than she should.

But she’s always liked fighting, liked a good brawl, liked forcing her body to work beyond endurance and come out the victor. She’s a little ashamed, though, of how much she likes knocking the Mandalorian into the ground. How much she enjoys him straining futilely against her strength. Not ashamed enough to stop, though. 

“Hey,” she grits out after they’ve been at it a while. Her forearm is wedged tight into the narrow space between his helmet and chest piece, firm against his windpipe. “What’s your name, anyway?”

He grunts, heaving, and then they’re both on their feet and at it again, no reply.

She takes a brutal jab to the kidney, a leg sweep, a right hook to the jaw, goes down with him riding her front but she hooks her hands into the loose fabric of his suit and rolls with it, flips them, slams him into the ground beneath her once more, pinning him momentarily still.

“Seriously,” Cara tries again. “What’s your name?”

“Why’s it matter?” he growls out, sounding frustrated.

She thinks she has about three seconds before he gets his knee free and she winds up with a lot of pain for her troubles. But she just shrugs a little, leans forward so that sweat from her hairline drops onto his visor in little beads that slide down, tremulous, marking him. 

She bares her teeth, half-grin, half-savagery. “I like to know the name of the ass I’m currently kicking.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” he laughs.

She barely has a chance to feel her whole body warm up to _that_ idea before all the breath gets knocked out of her. A confusing tumble of grappling hands and hissing breaths and dirty moves later and she’s blinking up at the sky, a plated knee planted in her stomach, the Mandalorian radiating cockiness above her. 

This time, it’s Cara who laughs, bright and sharp and more than a little wild. 

She can’t wait to get him beneath her again.

\---

The kid comes up to them after, when they’re sprawled panting in the grass.

One of the Mandalorian’s legs is kicked up over hers, just above the knee. It’s weirdly intimate, full of camaraderie. A single point of contact when their bodies are too hot and worked up to handle the smothering heat of touch, yet still they keep it. Cara tries not to get too distracted by it. Makes sure her hands land on grass, and not the open vulnerability of the Mandalorian’s inner thigh. 

“Hey,” Cara says, when she sees the little green face peering at her, upside down.

He’s so small, unbearably cute. Cara’s never been that comfortable around younglings, but the Mandalorian’s charge is something else. She thinks it might be the ears, or maybe it’s the way he’s always disobeying the Mandalorian. A little rebel after her own heart. He trills at her, a sweet little sound, and those tiny fingers reach down and pat the matted, sweaty hair clinging to her brow. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Cara grins, lopsided and warm. “I like you, too, little guy.”

“Don’t let that sweet act fool you,” the Mandalorian huffs. 

“Not buying what he’s selling?”

“Oh, I bought it,” the Mandalorian groans, as the kid waddles his way to the grass between them. Cara tilts her head to watch him, can’t help how her grin gets bigger when he settles onto the grass in an almost-accidental plop. Then, in one dramatic move, the kid flops backward so that he’s cradled at the intersection of her and the Mandalorian’s legs.

She can feel it when that leg tenses over hers, sudden and violent, as if he hadn’t even been aware that they were touching, or as if he’d been able to ignore it until now, when it was pointed out so blatantly.

Cara keeps breathing; stays easy.

Eventually, the Mandalorian forces himself to relax, a boneless sprawl of surrender. He leaves his leg where it is, tangled with hers, supporting the kid he’s sort-of adopted. Cara feels warm all through, from the sparring, the sun, the company. She thinks of the Mandalorian gasping beneath her, then carefully doesn’t. 

“Oh, now I see how it is,” Cara laughs. “Well, a bit too late to save me from the same trap. Looks like neither of us are going anywhere any time soon.”

“Ugh,” says the Mandalorian, fooling no one.

The kid closes his eyes, trilling happily, and takes a nap in the sun with them.

\---

She’s attached already, which is unheard of.

Cara’s never been any good at playing nice, not even when she was a kid. It hadn’t gotten any better when she’d become a teenager, either. Good thing, too, or she probably would have been scrapped out of some airlock along the way, left to litter the cosmos like so much forgotten space-junk. Her story wasn’t one of a ragtag bunch of loners come together to form some kind of found family out in the wilds of space. 

It was a lot shittier than that, but for the most part Cara likes it lonely.

After Endor, she didn’t get the chance to stay in the Western Reaches long. She wasn’t all that sorry to leave it behind, eager for something new. There were Imps all across the galaxy, they said. We need you elsewhere, they promised. Where there is a collapse of power there is always chaos, they foretold. 

So Cara went where they sent her, all the way to the Core planets, to play bodyguard. 

She’d hated it.

She’d told the Mandalorian when they’d first met, I didn’t sign up for that, but it wasn’t entirely true. When her unit disbanded and came into the employ of independent contractors, a buddy of hers had asked, You’re really signing on for this? Sounds like a kriffing holiday. 

Yeah, Cara’d replied, laughing. Sure. Why not?

With the grit of war in her mouth, blood in her eyes, fear in her bones, the answer had seemed so simple. Why not kick back, why not breathe easy for a while. Sign me up.

It wasn’t a holiday. It wasn’t, in fact, anything that Cara wanted. Eventually, she even hated the familiar white-and-red of her armor; what once she’d coveted she came to despise, too mired in bullshit, in treachery, in broken promises. At least that made it easier to do what she’d done, the reason there was a bounty on her head she’d never escape. Cara remembers her contractor asking, right after Cara had been incarcerated, just before she’d escaped the first time: Why’d you’d do it? Why’d you kill them? You had an easy job, an easy life. A soldier’s dream. Why’d you ruin it?

Cara remembers grinning.

I didn’t sign up for that.

\---

Time slips by, without meaning, until suddenly a new day dawns, different from the others.

The Mandalorian is going to leave.

Alone.

It’s not right, Cara thinks. Something gets tight in her chest, hearing him speak. Something hot and angry, violently dangerous. She’s been pushing for the Mandalorian to stay, to live his life in peace with Omera and their two kids, because that’s how life without the Empire’s chokehold on it is supposed to work. People get to have their happily ever afters, or at least, that’s what everyone wants to believe.

Cara’s a little surprised to find herself among that crowd.

But apparently she is, at least in this one instance, so she pushes just a little more. Tries to convince the Mandalorian that he’s allowed to settle, to take off that helmet, to give up this Way that he speaks of. If he wants it, if he needs it, then he should _have_ it, shouldn’t he? 

They’re good people, both of them. They deserve to get what they want.

When it actually happens, though, when the Mandalorian goes to the widow, his heart awkward on his tongue, hitching in his tone, obvious, so obvious, Cara finds that she can’t sit still, can’t stay, can’t _watch_.

Her heart aches, which is a new and horrible state of being. The Mandalorian just keeps on making her feel all sorts of weird things, and Cara wishes she could hate it, but she doesn’t. Can’t. But she sure as shit doesn’t have to be _happy_ about her little match-making project, not really. Satisfied at a job well done, but happy? No. She can be at least a little selfish about this, she thinks. She gets up, she prowls. She hunts the perimeter as if there might be any quarry left to find, any blood left to spill. She feels too big for her skin, itching for a fight, for escape, for a ship to take her lightyears away. 

She wasn’t supposed to get attached.

She wasn’t supposed to remember what it felt like to be _good_.

I didn’t sign up for this, she thinks. 

Halfway around the village she finds the bounty hunter, pointing a rifle at the kid that’s halfway stolen her heart. So it’s the easiest thing she’s ever done to lift her blaster and fire, point blank, into his sorry skull. Less easy is the way her heart twists, sorrowful and glad, knowing that the Mandalorian won’t stay, can’t stay, that Cara won’t lose him to an easy life.

He’s a good man.

Cara… is not.

\---

“Sorry,” she tells him, back inside the barn.

He’s packing up, preparing to leave with the kid. His movements are sharp, a little jagged, full of shuddering energy. She’s not sure if it’s from disappointment at how his plans have fallen through, embarrassment at having been caught distracted, or adrenaline from how close the kid came to having a hole put through his head.

It makes Cara want to knock him over, hold him still and tight and let him shake it out against her, wild and desperate. Against the wall, maybe, or flat on the bed. She’s not picky.

“It is what it is,” the Mandalorian says. 

His voice is tight, hushed. He keeps his helmet angled down, his shoulders bunched up high. Cara thinks of how he’d been before this village, the way he’d sprawled in his seat across from her, all chuffed up contentment, seemingly untouchable. This village has done a number on him, she thinks.

“Doesn’t make it fair,” she offers.

It’s mean to, probably. Like salt in a wound, pointing out the injustice of it all.

He whirls on her, cape getting caught around his knee, spine ramrod straight once more. He quivers; his chest piece hitches outward on a sharp inhale that gets caught, doesn’t go anywhere. Slowly, he deflates. Lifts up one gloved hand and opens it, empty, to the air. 

“I probably would have regretted it, anyway,” he admits. “Staying. Leaving the kid. Either way, I would have lost something.”

“If you say so. What are you losing with this choice?”

“Nothing,” he says, and drops his hand. “I’m the same as I was before. Nothing lost, nothing gained.”

He turns back to his packing, keeping busy. Cara can’t tell from his tone if he believed what he said or not; if he was honest. She wonders how he could have been, when even Cara isn’t the same as she’d been before he walked into her ragged, simple life. Him and that damned kid, stirring up trouble.

Ignoring the Mandalorian, Cara drops down to her knees before the crib that currently contains said damned kid. She reaches out, presses her fingertips to one chubby green cheek. The kid tilts his head into her touch, making a quiet chirruping sound, his ears drooping. 

“Hey,” Cara chastises. “Chin up. This just means you’ve more of the galaxy to see, little one.”

“It all starts to look the same after a while,” the Mandalorian mutters. 

“Don’t listen to that metalhead over there,” Cara hums, smirking conspiratorially with the little guy. Her heart _aches_ , damn it. “The galaxy is big and bright, and you’ll find plenty of new lifeforms to eat.”

“ _Don’t_ encourage him!”

“And maybe, if we’re all very lucky, our paths will cross again, and I can kick your nameless dad’s ass once more. For old time’s sake,” she finishes with a wink at those bright, too-big eyes and those ridiculous, too-big ears. 

Behind her, there’s quiet.

Cara fills it with gentle pats to the kid’s cheek, fondly memorizing his tiny, alien features. Just in case. Just in case they never see each other again. Which is probable, likely. The galaxy is big, full of dangers. There’s no telling where your feet might take you, or where your story might end.

“Dyn.”

At first, Cara doesn't catch the word the Mandalorian utters. It's just a sharp, low sound, a syllable she thinks might mean nothing save wordless frustration. But-- There’s something in his voice that Cara has never heard before, something that tells her that the word he just uttered isn’t just a _word_. Her aching heart stutters in her chest, surprised, and she carefully doesn’t consider what else that word might mean, not yet.

She turns, still kneeling on the ground, to face the Mandalorian. 

He isn’t looking at her. He’s standing across the room, turned in profile against the open window, backlit by brightness. 

“What?” she asks, tone careful.

“My name,” he says, and that something in his voice is almost identifiable. Something harsh, something raw, something deep and painful. “That-- You wanted to know, didn’t you? My name.”

“...Yeah,” she drawls out, real slow, still careful. “Yeah, actually. I do want to know it.”

His shoulders twitch, an aborted motion.

She holds her breath, waiting.

“Well, it’s-- Dyn. My name is Dyn.”

Cara doesn’t know how to respond, not immediately, in part because she doesn’t know how to feel. It’s probably not taboo to know a Mandalorian’s name, but the way _this_ Mandalorian dragged his feet and avoided the question made it feel as though it were. And now, the rough and heavy way that he gives it to her, like a gift that might explode in his face at any given moment--

“Thanks,” she says. “I’m glad to know it.”

He nods, just once.

Hesitates.

“Aren’t you… All that, and you’re not even going to use it?”

“Nah,” Cara drawls out, still slow, far less careful. She grins, bright and sharp like a piece of shrapnel. “I’ll save it up for a real special occasion, how about that? Your name’s safe with me.”

She can’t tell if the way his shoulders droop mean relief, or disappointment.

\---

A new dawn comes, and with it an empty barn.

Cara settles into her usual chair, feet up on her crate, waiting on the sun to top the treeline. She feels unmoored with possibility, buffeted by restlessness, but somehow aimless; there are so many places she can go, so much trouble she can find. It hurts to stay still, but she does, waiting on the deck while she tries to decide how best to plot her new course.

Omera finds her, a tray in hand.

In her other, she holds a tracking fob.

“What’s this?” Cara asks, frozen in her chair. She doesn’t even reach for the tray; lets Omera hold it, her strong arm steady. Slowly, the widow uncurls her fingers and reveals the fob to be the one the Mandalorian crushed just yesterday, left amidst the trees to be scattered and forgotten with time, now decently repaired and operational.

“I might, in addition to marksmanship, have picked up a bit of skill with a soldering iron,” Omera admits, cheeks flushing just slightly.

Cara stares. 

Then laughter blurts, tumbles out her mouth, impossible to contain. Cara gasps for breath amidst it, says, “I have never been so attracted to a farmer before in my _life_ , Omera.”

It makes the widow laugh, beautiful and soft, face crinkled with a smile and worn sweetly on the edges with the gentle day-to-day grind of a simple life. She really is beautiful, Cara thinks, and feels the bittersweet twist of her own heart, guilty and sorry and glad. 

“He couldn’t have stayed. Even if he wanted to--”

Cara snorts. “He wanted to. Trust me.”

But Omera shakes her head, long dark hair rustling over her shoulders. She tilts her hand closer, the fob slipping down her fingers toward Cara, asking to be taken. “Maybe a part of him did, but not _enough_ ,” she says. “I was a dream, one he’d had on lonely nights, I think. But you…”

Once more, Cara stares, feeling bewildered.

She has to swallow, her throat tight and clicking, before she can squeeze out the words, “What are you playing at, Omera?”

“I just think,” Omera murmurs, eyes downcast, “that the Mandalorian and his child could use someone like you in their life.”

“Like _me_.”

“To protect them,” Omera insists, gaze darting up now, a little impish, a lot stubborn. “The Mandalorian relied on you. You saved that child’s life yesterday. But that man is stubborn, and his pride is hurting. But I think-- I don’t think he wants to be alone.”

The tracking fob in her hand blinks sluggishly, _red-red-red_. 

“He didn’t even want my escort,” Cara says, words coming out slow and stilted.

Just as slowly, she reaches out and takes the tracker. It’s a slender piece of technology in her hand, alive with possibilities. Her feet, suddenly, itch to put the ground beneath them. The restlessness in her skin soothes into a burn, the fire of direction, of purpose.

“What he _wants_ ,” Omera replies, “may not be what he _needs_.”

\---

Cara isn’t a good person.

But maybe, _maybe_ , it doesn’t matter if she is.

Years ago, Cara had been a shock trooper and then a bodyguard and nothing had ended well. But Cara had never been attached before, not like this; had never had a job after Endor that had mattered, that had been good, noble, something she could risk her life for and know she wouldn’t regret it. 

She thinks that _this_ could matter: the Mandalorian and his boy. In a new way, a strange way, a better way than she’s ever experienced before.

Her heart, busted up and damaged as it is, certainly seems to think so.

  
  
  


\---

**Author's Note:**

> thanks again for reading <3


End file.
